Resource: African American Folktales

African American Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World

Author: Roger D. Abrahams
Year: 1985
Location: personal library

Table of Contents:


PART I. Getting Things Started: How the World Got Put Together That Way
1. Never Seen His Equal
2. The Man Makes and the Woman Takes
3. Bringing Men and Women Together
4. The Fight over Life
5. The Wind and the Water Fighting
6. The Word the Devil Made Up
7. The Knee-High Man Tries to Get Sizable
8. Pig’s Long Nose and Greedy Mouth
9. Getting Common Sense
10. Hankering for a Long Tail
11. The Devil’s Doing
12. The John Crows Lose Their Hair
13. Tadpole Loses His Tail
14. The Owl Never Sleeps at Night
15. Why Hens Are Afraid of Owls
16. The Gifts of Dipper and Cowhide
17. Buh Nansi Scares Buh Lion
18. Testing the Good Lord
19. Mr. Possum Loves Peace
20. Get Back, Get Back
21. No Justice on Earth

PART II. Minding Somebody Else’s Business and Sometimes Making It Your Own
22. Meeting the King of the World
23. Mr. Bamancoo Gets Dropped
24. The Tug-of-War between Elephant and Whale
25. Tiger Becomes a Biding Horse
26. The Telltale Pepper Bush
27. Making the Stone Smoke
28. The Latest Song
29. The Signifying Monkey
30. The Singing Bones
31. A Boarhog for a Husband
32. The Woman Who Was a Bird
33. My Mother Killed Me, My Father Ate Me

PART III. Getting a Comeuppance: How (and How Not) to Act Stories
34. What Makes Brer Wasp Have a Short Patience
35. Between the Fiddler and the Dancer
36. Being Greedy Chokes Anansi
37. The Doings and Undoings of the Dogoshes
38. Spreading Fingers for Friendship
39. Don’t Shoot Me, Dyer, Don’t Shoot Me
40. Little Eight John
41. The Poor Man and the Snake
42. The Little Bird Grows
43. Tricking All the Kings
44. The Feast on the Mountain and the Feast under the Water
45. Hide Anger until Tomorrow
46. Buying Two Empty Hands
47. Cutta Cord-La
48. Brer Bear’s Grapevine
49. A Foolish Mother
50. Old Granny Grinny Granny
51. You Never Know What Trouble Is until It Finds You
52. He Pays for the Provisions
53. The Cunning Cockroach
54. Little Boy-Bear Nurses the Alligator Children
55. The Girl Made of Butter
56. Poppa Stole the Deacon’s Bull
57. The Trouble with Helping Out
58. The Rooster Goes Away in a Huff

PART IV. How Clever Can You Get? Tales of Trickery and Its Consequences
59. Why They Name the Stories for Anansi
60. Brother Rabbit Takes a Walk
61. The Lion in the Well
62. A License to Steal
63. The Race between Toad and Donkey
64. Crawling into the Elephant’s Belly
65. A Strange Way to Sleep
66. Goobers Gone, Rabbit Gone
67. Assaulting All the Senses
68. Brer Rabbit’s Riddle
69. The Horned Animals’ Party
70. Anansi Plays Dead
71. Anansi Climbs the Wall
72. Dancing to the River
73. “Trouble” Coming Down the Road
74. No Chicken Tonight

PART V. The Strong Ones and the Clever: Contests and Confrontations
75. Golden Breasts, Diamond Navel, Chain of Gold
76. The Flying Contest
77. Loggerhead
78. Trying to Get the Goldstone
79. Stackolee
80. Escaping, Slowly
81. Turning into Nóuna—Nothing
82. The Old Bull and the Young One
83. Fasting for the Hand of the Queen’s Daughter
84. Weak in the Day and Strong at Night
85. Jack Beats the Devil
86. Three Killed Florrie, Florrie Killed Ten

PART VI. Getting Around Old Master (Most of the Time)
87. They Both Had Dead Horses
88. You Talk Too Much, Anyhow
89. Making the Eyes Run
90. Making a Wagon from a Wheelbarrow
91. The One-Legged Turkey
92. John Outruns the Lord
93. A Flying Fool
94. Horses Stay Outside
95. The Sinking of the Titanic
96. Competition for Laziness
97. John Outwits Mr. Berkeley
98. Black Jack and White Jack
99. Philanewyork
100. The Barn Is Burning

PART VII. In the End, Nonsense
101. Big-Gut, Big-Head, Stringy-Leg
102. A Chain of Won’ts
103. Animal Talk
104. A Comic Conversation
105. A Smoking Story
106. The Things That Talked
107. Endings